


Undertow

by ethelindi (eventide), melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Aftermath, Comfort, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, Rape Recovery, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2010-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:11:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eventide/pseuds/ethelindi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The very short version: Dave gives Aaron a back-rub. More slashy subtext than that scene from Star Trek (you know the one), with a little text thrown in. (The authors have referred to this fic, among themselves, as porn without sex--consider yourself advised.)</p><p>Warnings: References to rape, violence (season five spoilers) and child abuse. "Trauma headspace", as I believe we're calling it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undertow

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Undertow_ by Leonard Cohen.

He never falls apart where it can be seen. That’s the way this goes. But there’s been too little sleep and if he knows nothing else, Hotch at least knows when to recognise when he’s falling apart beyond his capacity to put a mask over it. And he never wants to scare the team again, so he manages to make it home. Make it somehow.

To the place that still carries the feel of Foyet. But it’s got a door he can shut and then, then you can let the tiredness take shape. Right now, everything seems to be sharper and more painful than usual and he’s so sore.

Hotch knows where the feeling of being covered in that tired, dirty soreness comes from. Some days it helps to be aware of his reactions, but right now? It’s one of the nights where seeing the way his reflexes have changed is one more burden. Knowing it’s hyper-vigilance only makes it hurt more, only makes him mourn, and he doesn’t know how to manage nights like this. It’s a different kind of coping skill, to navigate what it is to have been raped and to feel it in your muscles and on your skin, in that soreness.

He wants to forget about being a good adult and curl up somewhere. Forget about bothering to pull off his shoes and get out of his clothes--he just wants his back against something solid and a few hours of sleep. But his head is starting to ache, and it’s only going to get worse if he spends the next few hours curled into the couch. He doesn’t need that level of pain, tonight or ever. He needs to be at the office early tomorrow - just before he’d left today, JJ had asked for help deciding on their next case. Three options, equally urgent--the fallout from the two she can’t choose isn’t something she needs to carry the blame for. He needs to take care of the headache, to make sure it’s not a distraction or a hindrance. So he changes into a worn grey t-shirt and pajama bottoms, gets himself a glass of water and the bottle of ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet, and makes his way to the couch. His suit is gone now and all he needs to be is sore, tired and scared. Failing, again, but at least the team does not know.

At least he has not given his team one more pain, to add to the others. At least Jack is with his cousins tonight. Knowing that helps a little when he curls into a corner of the couch and tries to just breathe.

The doorbell rings. It’s so difficult not to entirely startle, to instead pull himself together enough to answer the door. Everything is too heavy, too sore to think of moving but somehow, he does it (it might be one of the team, and he doesn’t want to give them cause for concern). When he looks through the peephole, he sees Dave.

Dave. Dave, who must have noticed. Hotch invites him inside but feels sick, and that must show too--Dave looks at him with a carefully blank expression, without judgment, which might hurt worse than anything. Because _this was my fault_, Aaron wants to say. _My fault - I trusted him, helped him...I couldn’t fight him off_. All the things he knows are wrong, objectively. All the things he can tell others not to believe, but so easily believes himself.

“Aaron, it’s just me. You don’t have to be okay right now.”

Somehow Dave gets them both onto the couch. As he sits there, his best friend beside him, the exhaustion breaks over him. Dave is here, steady and unwavering, and Aaron is so damn tired. He just wants to let go, just for a few minutes--but he can't, he can't, it's not safe. He’s afraid and he can't fucking breathe and it feels like someone has his chest in a vice. The sorrow is crushing.

He's worked so hard. He's kept himself together, he's clawed his way back from the darkness that early life pushed him down into and held him under. And right now he just wants to curl up, wants to sleep, wants to let go--he's drowning in his own control. The world is spinning too fast and he's being left behind and--

And Dave is saying "Aaron", softly. "Aaron, you're hurting yourself. You need to relax." But that's just it--he doesn't remember how. He has to watch, has to be sure it's safe--he knows it’s hyper-vigilance, but that doesn't make it easier and oh god, he's so tired, he can't keep doing this and his head is killing him, his head and his shoulders and his neck and back and, well, pretty much anywhere in his body he has tissue that can contract, his fascia and muscles are stuck in fight-or-flight and he's just so...

Dave is handing him the ibuprofen. He swallows it obediently, and Dave, standing in front of him, brings his hands up to rest lightly on Aaron’s shoulders. Thumbs on his clavicles, fingers spanning the crest of his shoulder blades, palms arched away from contact. "It's not going to help for long, not when you're this tense. Let me help."

Aaron swallows and nods, once, jerkily--because this is Dave. Dave is safe. He lets Dave pull him to his feet and maneuver him to the bedroom, to the edge of his bed and gently push down until he sinks onto the edge of the mattress.

Dave brings himself around the corner of the bed, behind Aaron, and Aaron realizes he's humming something low, bass notes, something constant and reassuring that announces Dave's location. "I'm going to touch you," Dave says, and Aaron hopes his reaction to that doesn’t show on his face because god, is he that transparent? He shoves down the shame that tries to rise in the pit of his stomach (you hide your bruises, you don't attract attention, _if anyone knew_...for all he knows it's wrong, it's also stuck on repeat in his head. His father's voice--_weak, spineless, you fucking girl_). He locks it away, and Dave rests the pads of his fingers on his collarbones, this time from behind, and pauses briefly before resting his palms on Aaron's shoulders. Dave's hands are so warm--the heat radiates into his muscles and he feels his shoulders sink just a little as the warmth encourages his muscles to let go. And then Dave's hands start moving and it's--god, his hands are magic. Fingers digging in, pressing down and pulling him apart and it aches, burns, it feels so good. Dave works Aaron’s body under his hands like he's sculpting it back into what it should be. Aaron exhales shakily, and Dave rests his palms against his skin again--the return of that beautiful warmth.

Those strong hands move inward, circle the column of his neck in the L between thumbs and index fingers. Aaron feels his head tip back slightly and Dave shifts his hands, his fingers slipping up into Aaron's hair, cradling his skull, his thumbs pressing into the join of neck and head. And oh, _fuck_, that _hurts_. When Dave presses down Aaron's head jerks back, and Dave chuckles. "That’s where your migraines always start," he reminds Aaron. "You'd have been completely out of commission tomorrow."

Aaron's all out of words, biting down on his lip against the pain noises he wants to make. Every time Dave's thumbs circle those points, every time they dip into the tension there, it sends pain crackling toward his eyes. Dave stops when a small noise finally escapes, flattening his hands again and holding Aaron's head.

"You okay?" he asks, and Aaron doesn't answer right away. A few moments go by before he says "Yeah. Yeah, go on." It's not as bad now, but he still winces as Dave's spiraling thumbs rub the pain from a nerves-on-fire electric crackle to a dull bruised ache. When Aaron's head tips forward, when he relaxes into the movements, Dave rests his hands back on Aaron's shoulders.

"Better?" Aaron tips his head from side to side, around in a careful circle--it's more range of motion than he’s had in days, maybe a week, maybe more. "Yeah," he says, and if his voice is hoarse he can blame it on the pain, and not the emotion welling up. Not this terrifying vulnerability. Instead of removing his hands Dave rests one of them at the base of his neck, over his spine.

“Let me get the rest,” Dave says. It’s more a statement than a question but Aaron knows he’s allowed to refuse.

And he does. Taking off his shirt, even only in front of Dave, isn’t something he’s going to do without protest. “I’m fine,” he says.

Dave stares at him until the determination on his face twists into something uncomfortable and yielding. “No,” Dave says, “You aren’t.”

Aaron doesn’t want to say it in words, so he gives in to his reflexes--curls in around his torso, crosses his arms, fidgets with the hem of his shirt. He keeps his face carefully blank, and waits for Dave to pick up on his primary reason for refusing.

“Aaron.” Aaron’s back straightens and his eyes meet Dave’s before dropping to the carpet. He doesn’t want to see the comprehension there, especially if it’s tempered with pity.

“I won’t--I’ll turn around,” Dave says. “So you can lie down.”

Aaron turns to meet Dave’s eyes and convince him that _no, really, he’ll be fine_. But Dave’s expression is devoid of all pity, and something about the calmness there convinces him that this doesn’t have to be a big thing. It is what it is: just his best friend offering to fill a need.

So Aaron nods stiffly, waits for Dave to turn, and keeps his back to the other man while he pulls his shirt over his head. His arms don’t quite want to reach that high--he needs this more than he thought--but he manages to get out of his grey t-shirt and lie down.

“Okay,” Dave says quietly, and it’s both question and warning statement--his right hand is hovering over Aaron’s back, and when Aaron says “yes” it settles onto bare skin. He’s keyed up enough that, in the split-second before skin and skin make contact, the radiating heat and brush of Dave’s hand against the hairs on the nape of his neck send shivers from his lower back in a branching line to his skull. It’s anticipatory--half anxiety, half something he doesn’t have a name for.

But then Dave rests the heel of his hand just below Aaron’s neck, and brings his weight to bear on that hand. There’s a popping noise, and Aaron feels the muscles in his upper back release their death-grip on his spine. The hollow feeling in his chest breaks, and his anxiety level drops to something manageable.

Dave’s hands set to work. Aaron keeps his anxiety in check, mostly, until Dave’s fingers work their way to his sides. But then Dave’s hands are working just below his ribs, and--Aaron’s positioned to hide the scars, and Dave doesn’t visibly react, but his fingers travel across the corner of a scar, and when Aaron loses the sensation of his fingers for that brief moment the panic returns full force. He flinches (and mentally berates himself, in an internal voice that isn’t his own, for letting on), and with that reflex his muscles all contract again.

Dave is not Foyet. His touch is not what Foyet’s was. Logic doesn’t work on reflexes, but the reassuring nature of Dave’s presence does. Dave smells like himself, moves like himself, and is still quietly humming what may be Leonard Cohen. They are small things, but they remind his body that it’s Dave’s hands on his skin.

Dave’s hands leave his sides. One rests between his shoulder-blades, and the other just above the dip in his lower back--both flat-palmed, warm, reassuring. Aaron does his best to regulate his breathing, to relax his body, and Dave’s hands start tracing circles on his skin.

“Aaron,” Dave says, and it takes time for it to register. He’s too busy fighting himself, fighting Dave’s hands, fighting the muscles in his body that tense back up as soon as he’s not focused on relaxing them. “Aaron, hey, it’s okay. You can stop fighting. I’ve got you.”

He’s shaking. He’s shaking all over with the effort to relax and simultaneously stay alert, and he’s just so tired and...”I’ve got you,” Dave says, and his voice is warm and low and Aaron wants so badly to let someone else take the world from his shoulders for a little while.

“I can’t,” Aaron chokes. “I can’t.” But Dave’s warm hand rests between his shoulder-blades, along his spine, and he feels the heat soaking into his skin. It’s not just his muscles that give a little, it’s the emotion caught in his throat and his chest and in the pit of his stomach. It’s the tears that have been leaking slowly, continuously, from the corners of his eyes and into his hair, his cool sweat-damp skin that feels bruised all over.

“You can’t always be the one standing sentry,” Dave reminds him. “There’s a reason it’s done in shifts.”

Aaron doesn’t let go in words, but in a sudden boneless melt under Dave’s hands, a raw noise tearing loose from his throat as he finally gives in. Gravity tugs him toward the dip in the mattress where Dave is sitting. His body tilts a little sideways, and Dave’s fingers skim the edges of his scars as his torso moves to rest against Dave’s thigh. That unbroken line of contact feels so good, so warm, like he’s absorbing something more than body heat--it’s been so long, and his skin is hungry.

“There,” Dave whispers, and his hands move from the line of Aaron’s spine to stroke his clammy skin. “Good.” Aaron’s breathing is still emotional and uneven, catching roughly on the exhale, but as Dave continues to trace patterns on his back Aaron’s breathing evens out into the deep, slow rhythm of sleep.

~*~

**_I set out one night  
When the tide was low  
There were signs in the sky  
But I did not know  
I'd be caught in the grip  
Of the undertow  
Ditched on a beach  
Where the sea hates to go  
With a child in my arms  
And a chill in my soul  
And my heart the shape  
Of a begging bowl _  
**  
\-- Undertow, Leonard Cohen**  
****  
****  
**


End file.
